Nano-Arch online. Quantum-dot Cellular Automata (QCA)

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1 Nano-Arch online Quantum-dot Cellular Automata (QCA) 1 Introduction In this chapter you will learn about a promising future nanotechnology for computing. It takes great advantage of a physical effect: the Coulomb force that interacts between electrons. There also exists an alternative implementation that uses magnetic fields, but this practical course will not cover magnetic QCA for now. Though it is still difficult to produce and operate with these devices under typical temperature conditions, simulations predict promising numbers, like theoretical clock rates of several THz. 2 The QCA cell In contrast to electronics based on transistors, QCA does not operate by the transport of electrons, but by the adjustment of electrons in a small limited area of only a few square nanometers. QCA is implemented by quadratic cells, the so-called QCA cells. In these squares, exactly four potential wells are located, one in each corner of the QCA cell (see figure 1). In the QCA cells, exactly two electrons are locked in. They can only reside in the potential wells. The potential wells are connected with electron tunnel junctions. They can be opened for the electrons to travel through them under a particular condition, by a clock signal. A later chapter will cover this in more detail. Without any interaction from outside, the two electrons will try to separate from each other as far as possible, due to the Coulomb force that interacts between them. As a result, they will reside in diagonally located potential wells, because the diagonal is the largest possible distance for them to reside (see figure 2 ). Copyright 2012 University of Erlangen-Nürnberg. All rights reserved. 1

2 Potential well Electron tunnel junction Cell substrate Figure 1: Anatomy of a QCA cell Electron in potential well Figure 2: Electrons in potential wells Empty potential well There are two diagonals in a square, which means the electrons can reside in exactly two possible adjustments in the QCA cell. Regarding these two arrangements, they are interpreted as a binary '0' and binary '1', i.e. each cell can be in two states. The state '0' and the state '1', as shown in figure 3. A binary system is something familiar, as boolean logic is used already in today's computers. There, a high voltage is often interpreted as binary '1' and a low voltage as binary '0'. Binary 0 Binary 1 Figure 3: Binary interpretation of adjustments Copyright 2012 University of Erlangen-Nürnberg. All rights reserved. 2

3 3 Information and data propagation If two QCA cells are placed next to each other, it is possible to exchange their states, i.e. the adjustments of the electrons in them. The QCA cell that should transfer its state to a neighboring cell must have its tunnel junctions closed, the tunnel junctions in the neighboring cell have to be open, to allow the electrons to travel through the tunnel junctions between the potential wells. As soon as they open, the electrons in the neighboring cell are pushed by the Coulomb force of the original cell as far away as possible. As they also are pushed away from each other, they will travel into the same potential wells as in the original cell. As soon as the tunnel junctions are closed again, the transfer of the state is completed. The state of a cell can also be transferred to multiple neighboring cells. It works the very same way as with a single neighbor cell, but the tunnel junctions of all the sequentially neighboring cells should be open at the same time, which makes the transfer much faster then transferring the state cell by cell. This allows us to build wires, made of QCA cells, to transport information over larger distances. 4 Basic QCA elements and gates So far, we know how to interpret and transport information with QCA cells, but yet we lack the possibility for computations. For QCA cells the basic gate is a three-input majority voter. It is built from five cells, arranged as a cross. Input A Adjusts to majority of surrounding Coulomb forces Input B Majority output Input C Figure 4: QCA majority voter Copyright 2012 University of Erlangen-Nürnberg. All rights reserved. 3

4 4.1 QCA Majority voter From physics, it is know that the Coulomb forces of several electrons sum up. The majority voter takes advantage of this effect. The cells on top, at the left and at the bottom work as input connection cells. As the Coulomb forces of the electrons of all input cells sum up, the middle cell adjusts to the majority of adjustments of the input connection cells. Finally the output cell adjusts to the middle cell and the resulting state of the majority vote can be obtained from the output cell. 4.2 QCA AND gate As we work in the field of QCA with the known binary representation, it is preferable to have further logic gates we are already familiar with. By a slight modification, it is possible to turn the majority voter into an AND gate. The boolean AND outputs 1 if all inputs are 1, otherwise 0. Regarding two inputs of the majority voter, as the inputs of an AND gate, and the voter should not output 1 if only one of the two inputs is one, a fixed cell is added as third input, that always is in the 0 state. If both AND inputs are 1, the two 1s sum up to a stronger Coulomb force than the single fixed 0 cell and the majority voter is turned into a two-input AND gate (see figure 5). The fixed cell can be obtained by setting it to the 0 state and never open the electron tunnel junctions. Input A Input B AND output Fixed 0 Figure 5: QCA AND gate Copyright 2012 University of Erlangen-Nürnberg. All rights reserved. 4

5 4.3 QCA OR gate The OR gate is built almost exactly like the AND gate, but instead of a fixed 0, a fixed 1 QCA cell must be attached as one input. The fixed 1 cell sums up to a stronger Coulomb force with a single other input being adjusted to 1, so that the OR gate will output 1, if one of the free inputs is 1. Input A Input B AND output Fixed 0 Figure 6: QCA OR gate 4.4 QCA NOT gate It is also possible to build a QCA NOT gate. The implementation in QCA takes advantage of geometry of cell adjustments. One QCA wire is forked to two wires, the switch of the cell adjustment takes place by putting the output cell next to the forked wires so that only corners are touching. Since only cell corners are touching right of the fork and the cells at the end of the fork will have the same adjustment and the cell on the right of the fork will not adjust with an electron close to an electron at the corner at the end of the fork, the adjustment right of the fork will be inverted. This makes a 1 at the input a 0 at the output and vice versa. Inversion of the data Input 0 Output 1 Figure 7: QCA NOT gate Copyright 2012 University of Erlangen-Nürnberg. All rights reserved. 5

6 5 Symmetric cells and special cell arrangements During the design of a QCA circuit, the situation is likely to occur, that QCA wires have to be crossed. In contrast to classic transistor technology, where wires can only cross on by inserting another layer, QCA wires can be crossed in the same layer. This works by introducing a QCA cell type, where the four potential wells are not in the corners of the cell but in the middle of the edges (see figure 8). 0 1 Figure 8: Symmetric adjustable QCA cell If several of these QCA cells are put together to form a wire, the adjustment of the succeeding cell is the inverted to its predecessor and so on. The advantage of this type of QCA cell originates from its symmetric effect of Coulomb force on regular cells. Though the electrons indeed interact with electrons in neighboring regular QCA cells, but by the symmetry they do not push the electrons in regular QCA cells to a particular adjustment. In the other direction, electrons in a regular cell do not push the electrons in a symmetric cell into a particular potential well. This allows building wire crossings of these QCA cells with regular ones. A crossing is built by a continuous wire of special cells, building a gap in across a wire of regular cells. 0 1 Figure 9: QCA wire crossing 1 0 Of course, it has to be possible to connect symmetric QCA cells to regular ones and vice versa. This works by putting a regular cell as a neighbor of two symmetric cells near the beginning or end of a wire of symmetric cells. One has to take car which two symmetric Copyright 2012 University of Erlangen-Nürnberg. All rights reserved. 6

7 cells are chosen, as neighbors of this type are in the inverted adjustment, depending on the needed adjustment, the original or the inverted one (see figure 10). Output 1 Input 0 Figure 10: Connections between symmetric and regular QCA cells 6 Clock zones Clock zones are a tricky challenge of QCA. They avoid random adjustments of QCA cells and guide the information flow, in particular the data propagation, through QCA circuits. In contrast to transistor-based circuits, one clock cycle consists of four clock signals, which are delayed by ¼ of the whole clock cycle among each other, as depicted in figure 11. Clock 0 Clock 1 Clock 2 Clock 3 Figure 11: The four shifted clock signals The figures in this chapter will always show clock zones like clock 0, clock 1 and so on. This is for convenience, of course you can also read it as clock n, clock n+1, clock n+2. Important is, that particular groups of QCA cells are in different clock zones. When the clock signal is high, it opens the electron tunnel junctions in QCA cells. Opened tunnel junctions allow the two electrons in a QCA cell to travel between potential wells. Depending on the surrounding Coulomb forces around the QCA cell, the electrons will travel to respective potential wells. Copyright 2012 University of Erlangen-Nürnberg. All rights reserved. 7

8 To successfully propagate data through a QCA wire, the clock zones in the wire must be connected to successive clock signals in the direction of the wanted data propagation (see figure 12). This allows the QCA circuit designer to guide information in a controlled manner through the circuit. Clock 0 No shift Clock 1 Shifted by 1/4 Clock 2 Shifted by 1/2 Clock 3 Shifted by 3/4 Figure 12: Controlling data propagation in a QCA wire There is a rough upper limit for the size of one clock zone. In QCA wires with almost no other QCA cells near the wire, i.e. with no Coulomb force noise from the surrounding, clock zones can be large. In areas with QCA cells around the wire, the clock zones must be smaller. There is no strict rule for the size of a clock zone dependent on the surrounding noise, but in general it turns out that in noisy areas clock zones might have to be as small as only two QCA cells. In areas with almost no noise, clock zones can be built as large as QCA cells. Though there are no strict rules where to begin and end a clock zone, there is some bestpractice, how to put clock zones around the basic gates, presented in the previous chapters. When you design QCA circuits, we strongly recommend to stick to these clock zones, there exist only very rare cases where clock zones around the basic gates can differ without affecting a reliable data propagation. 6.1 NOT gate clock zones Since the NOT gate has a slightly critical zone of arranged QCA cells, it's important to put the cells in the proper clock zones to avoid randomly flipped adjustments of electrons near the forking wire. The clock zone of the input should end at the beginning of the fork. The complete fork itself, i.e. the U-shaped wire, should be in the subsequent clock zone of the input and the output should be in the subsequent clock zone of the fork. Copyright 2012 University of Erlangen-Nürnberg. All rights reserved. 8

9 Input Output Clock 0 Clock 2 Clock 1 Figure 13: QCA NOT gate clock zones Input A Clock 0 Input B Clock 1 Clock 2 Output Input C Figure 14: QCA majority voter clock zones 6.2 Majority voter clock zones For the majority voter it is important, that all cells are in the same clock zone. Putting some cells in different clock zones can lead to wrong results. The center cell and the three input plus the output cell have to be in the same clock zone. 6.3 Wire crossing clock zones Though it was mentioned before, that the symmetric special QCA cells do not affect regular ones in a wire crossing, this is only true when special cells are in a stable state, i.e. the clock signal is low and both electrons reside in potential wells. If the electrons are traveling through the tunnel junctions, they may have an asymmetric effect on neighboring Copyright 2012 University of Erlangen-Nürnberg. All rights reserved. 9

10 regular QCA cells, potentially pushing them into a wrong adjustment. To avoid this effect, crossing wires should be in different clock zones. Clock 1 Clock 0 Clock 0 Figure 15: QCA wire crossing clock zones Figure 16: 1 bit adder implemented in QCA Copyright 2012 University of Erlangen-Nürnberg. All rights reserved. 10

11 7 QCA circuit design QCA is a technology, not yet being ready for the market. As a result, you will design and simulate QCA circuits. For this, you will use the QCADesigner software which allows design of circuits with an easy to use graphical user interface. The simulation is also done with QCADesigner. We chose QCADesigner, as it is the most realistic simulator from a physical point of view, so your simulations will be very exact. The very realistic simulation allows you to detect disturbances of neighboring QCA cells or cell areas that should not interact with each other. As a first example for a complete QCA circuit, we begin with a 1 bit adder as shown in figure 16. Different colors mean different clock zones, beginning with green, cyan, light blue and white. The blue QCA cells, labeled A and B, are input cells of the adder. As you can see, both type of cells, symmetric and regular ones, are used in this circuit, because it requires wire crossings. The four orange cells are fixed cells to build AND and OR gates from majority voters. The yellow cells are output cells, labeled S for sum and C for the carry bit. If you follow the clock zones in each path of the circuit, you will see, that the adder needs 2 ¼ clock cycles to display the result at the output cells, i.e. the data in each path travels through 9 sequential clock signals. It is also possible to verify that the QCA adder is correct. A simple 1 bit adder can be described by these two formulas: S= A B A B and C= A B. This means that the output S should become 1 when either A is 0 but B is 1 or when A is 1 but B is 0. C should become 1 when A and B are 1. These formulas are implemented in our QCA 1 bit adder. If one follows the inputs to the top half of the circuit, there once A, once B, are negated and connected to the not negated other input in an AND gate. Near the output S is the OR gate. C can be verified easily, the inputs are connected in the AND gate at the bottom of the circuit. Copyright 2012 University of Erlangen-Nürnberg. All rights reserved. 11